Shatter the Earth (Cassandra Palmer 10)

“Tobias, I’d like to present our new Pythia, Cassie Palmer.”

“Of course, of course! Seen your pretty face in the papers,” Tobias said, and winked at me. Before grabbing my hand, too, and rather aggressively kissing it.

“Is the chef’s table available?” Pritkin asked.

“For our Pythia? Naturally.” He snapped his fingers, and a skinny guy with a mop came running. “Take care of our guests. Wine, bread, new tablecloth. And get their orders.” He beamed at me some more. “I’ll make yours myself.”

“Thanks?” I said,

because the kitchen had five brick ovens built into the walls, all of which were running full out. It was at least a hundred degrees in there and probably hotter.

I wasn’t sure that the chef’s table was going to be a lot of fun.

But it ended up being better than I’d thought. For one thing, it wasn’t the ‘chef’s table’ so much as the chef’s actual table, as in the one where he and his senior cooks took their breaks. As such, it was outside the purgatory of the kitchen and on the other side of the landing, shoved into a nook behind a wall of wine boxes and some crates full of eggplants.

It was actually a reasonable temperature this far away, and not nearly as loud as I’d thought. The crates blocked off some of the sound from below, and the surrounding rock seemed to insulate us even more. It wasn’t exactly quiet—Tobias could be heard every now and then, cursing up a storm; pots and pans crashed in the kitchen; cooks rushed back and forth along the balcony, ferrying ingredients to the ovens’ insatiable gullets; and the background roar of conversation from below rose and fell like the ocean.

Yet it was weirdly cozy.

The light probably had something to do with that. It was dim, with most of it coming from the kitchen, through a narrow gap between the crates and the wall. Although there was also a half-burned candle stuck in a wine bottle in the center of the table, pretending to be useful. The new table cloth was pristine, the wine was tasty, and the menus were straightforward pub grub, with a heavy emphasis on Italian specialties.

But I already knew what I wanted. “Pizza,” I told the waiter emphatically.

He stumbled, and his sweaty shock of brown hair almost hit the table. I grabbed his arm, trying to steady him, before belatedly realizing that he was attempting to bow. We both stared at each other for a moment in mutual embarrassment, and then both laughed.

It was turning into a crazy night.

“Pizza,” he agreed, as somebody else delivered salads and bread. “Deep dish will take a little longer, but it’s worth it.”

“I can wait,” I said, and Pritkin nodded. We settled on green pepper, Italian sausage and onions, and the waiter hurried off with the mop he was still carrying.

I dipped warm, fresh baked bread into an oil and herb mixture, took a bite, and my eyes flew open. I quickly finished the whole piece, before making a sound of pure pleasure. “Oh, yeah. Oh, that’s good.”

Pritkin’s lips quirked.

“What?” I asked.

“Nothing. I just learned how to reliably get a moan out of you.”

“I hadn’t noticed you having any trouble.”

That got me an actual smile, but nothing else, unless you counted him eating an olive at me. Which probably should count, I thought, noticing the way the candlelight played across his lips and turned his eyes emerald. I found myself just watching him eat salad for a while, admiring the way the shifting light caught the faint blond beard along his jaw. I sometimes wondered why he didn’t grow the full thing, because he hated to shave and wasn’t trying to be sexily scruffy.

Although that was working out pretty well, frankly.

Down girl, I thought, and switched the subject to the least sexy thing I could think of before I got in trouble.

“What’s the big deal about three?”

Chapter Thirty-Five

Pritkin looked up from his salad with a puzzled expression. “What?”

“Something Jonathan said. That there must be three.”

Pritkin frowned, probably because he’d been buried under a mountain of mages at the time, and hadn’t heard him. “He said a lot of things. The man is clearly mad.”

“Yeah, but I keep hearing that one.”